1.Stop making yourself a china doll. Painted on smiles the color of turned
Merlot and skin a silent still water pond. You let men break you, like stained
glass windows at wartime. Swallowed metal. Hide their bullets in your stomach
until you cough lead. This is not the only way love can taste.

2.The world does not owe you success. So give every ounce of yourself until
you’re only hopscotch of shattered syllables. Learn to echo. Write like your
life depends on it. It does. Be so good they can’t ignore you. And expect
nothing. Know that words will be your only food. Chew them hard before you spit
them out.

3.Clean out the closet. There are rotting pieces of you, other people
bruised and worm-holed. Like peaches that forgot how to ripen. Do not replay
those conversations. The ones that left your heart so empty, that you’ve become
a church no one prays in.

4.It's okay to be tired. To cry behind a steering wheel during unfriendly
commutes. To hate the watered-down lettuce you call lunch. There is no rehab
for perfection and the way it subtracts pieces of you, like a hurricane of
hungry teeth. A Richter scale of self confidence each time that earthquake of a
voice asks, “am I good enough.” Yes. And No.

5.Wear your scars on the outside. Write poetry in the bathtub you have named
your temple. You are a superhero of heartbreak. Sew a cape. While you’re at it,
catch a theme song. No matter how times you are orphaned on cathedral steps,
you will always fight for good.

6. We all need love. We wait, like feral dogs at lovers’ doors. Begging for
someone to let us in. Beware of those who never bark. Who hold secrets like
locked doors, professor’s shock collar philosophies. Know that you have done
nothing wrong. Not every door is made of glass.

5. You can heal. Pieces of you will break. But you are not broken. Live at
the bottom of the ocean with spilt ends until you crab claws grow back. Make
friends with the fish whose names you cant pronounce. Just keep swimming. Rip
currents are imaginary, like mad queens and unmarked tombstones.

6. This isn’t even close to over. In all the ways that scare or give
breathing room, there are no periods at the end of this sentence. Skip with
ellipses, wink with the semi-colons, you my darling, are all paragraphs and
poetry. Someday this ending will be a tattooed line of literature, on a
shoulder that is always kissed goodnight.

7. You are a masterpiece. Sometimes you need to cut off an ear or live in
the back of a museum to find your audience. You are a train wreck of tidal
waves, ready to break. Use every color in the crayon box. The brake them in
half. Wake the neighbors and never, even apologize for all the ocean of ways,
you feel this world.

When you see a white, American girl from a middle-class family, the last
thing you think is illegal immigrant, but that's what I was. For one year, I
gave up my identity, tip toed off the grid, and learned a lesson in humility
and humanity.

Before I decided to move to Barcelona, I taught English at a
continuation high school for at-risk youth on the border of Mexico. Every day,
I was met with the exhausted eyes of my students, who had walked and waited
hours to cross into the United States. In the rain, in the heat, attending to
siblings with bagged lunches, they lined up for a shot at the American Dream.
In the blue-black morning they braved their journey, accompanied by parents’
prayers, wiping sleep from their eyes, homework in their hands. Although half
our students weren’t “legal” citizens, my school taught with the mindset that
education, if nothing else, should be equitable. Each day they told me stories
in broken English of cartels and kidnapping. Most days, it hurt to listen. I
called them my heroes.

They loved me and I loved them, but somewhere between my whiteboard and
their desks, there was a disconnect, an ocean between us. It wasn’t until I
asked them to put their story on paper, that I realized that language was an
invisible bridge neither one of us had the words to cross. They would fumble
with adjectives, unsure and hesitant, their mouths’ searching for the English
counterpart to all their Spanish emotions. Between rolling r’s our eyes would
meet, we both wanted so badly to understand, but there was still a border
between us. My students and I each felt guilty and embarrassed at our inability
to find our footing. There were no syllables to meet the different paths we
walked. Out of 300 staff and students, only three people at my school didn't
speak Spanish, I was one of them. There was this gaping question mark that
tickled my conscience. I realized curriculum will never reach character if you
don’t understand culture. I craved palabras, to find roadmaps to their
story.

I knew there was an easy way to solve this: take classes, buy Rosetta
Stone, practice on my 45-minute commute. But I have never liked easy. Through
struggle we learn about the parts of our self that are waiting to find a voice.
And once you find that voice, you truly learn to sing. With frustration biting
at my heels, I decided to leave my comfort zone. I gave up my adorable San
Diego beach cottage, waved goodbye to some of the best friends I’ve ever known,
and moved to Barcelona. It wasn’t until I stepped foot on Spanish soil that I
realized the extremity of what I had done.

I studied for months before, begged my students to quiz me, watched
movies in Spanish to try to begin a conversation with the world I would walk
into. It wasn’t until a taxi driver asked for my new Spanish address that I
realized how lost I truly was. I had moved to a country with no friends, no
job, and no mastery of the language. At the moment, shaking in the back of a
Barcelona cab, I felt I had made the biggest mistake of my life.

“Que?” “Que?” The driver barked at me. “No entiendo.” He couldn’t
understand what I was saying. My trembling hand wrote the down my new
address.

I always had a way with words. I tinkered with language and its
magic to alter perspective and inspire change. I wrote poetry that evoked goose
bumps. I worked as an investigative journalist begging the world to ask more
questions. Words were my superpower, and I had given them away.

Because of the varied dialects in Spain, English is not always a
priority. In Barcelona, most children learn Castellano, Spanish, and then the
local language, Catalan. The “don’t- worry-everyone-speaks-English” tourist
mentality just doesn't apply. There was no one to help, no one to translate. I
thought of my students and how badly I wanted to learn.

In Barcelona, I worked as an English teacher at language schools,
conducted one-on-one lessons, and taught a speaking class at a local high
school. “You know no Spanish?” They would ask me. I would smile and say “un
poco.” Just a little.

My first three months in Barcelona, felt like trying to complete a puzzle
with half the pieces missing. I had to find new friends, support myself on a
barely-there income and navigate a city of unnamed alleyways and unfamiliar
traditions. Too poor to pay for Spanish classes, each day I spent hours on the
Internet, writing Spanish flashcards and memorizing phrases. As I slowly
rebuilt my superpower in a different tongue, the calendar marched
forward.

I knew the day was coming that my ninety-day visa would expire, and I
would be forced to make a choice. I could stay, live illegally, and give up my
right as a citizen. Or I could return to America, and slip back into a comfort
zone that always left me craving more. I was learning too much to cut this
adventure short.

There were serious moments of regret. I would call home crying because it
took me three days to find nail polish remover, or because without health
insurance a doctor’s visit cost a week’s salary. With a handful of Spanish in
my pocket, a bank account in single digits, and longs walks in the rain to
work, I knew how my students back in Chula Vista felt. Now, my eyes were like
theirs, tired and pleading for understanding.

Christmas was looming and I would return home to the United States for a
short visit. Excited to see my family and friends, and ecstatic to speak
English, I boarded my flight back home with a layover in Munich.

In December, Germany was cold and unforgiving. A snowstorm had grounded
all flights and with hotel vouchers and routine apologies, passengers were
asked to stay the night. In yet another desert of foreign tongues, I searched
frantically for someone to translate the situation. Only one question loomed in
my mind: if I left the airport would I have to go through customs? I received
quizzical nods.

Customs meant I could be deported. The stamp on my passport was well past
the ninety-day tourist visa. And even during a giving season, I knew my chances
weren’t good. That night I slept on the floor of the Munich airport. I hid my
passport and cell phone in my bra, for fear of being robbed, and completely
stopped feeling like a person. A citizen who mattered. I remember a chill
waking me in the middle of the night. As my eyes focused I was staring face to
face with a large rat, scouring for rest as aggressively as me. This is what it
feels like to be second-class citizen; I thought, to give up your identity for
a shot a something different, something better.

After a New Jersey holiday and tales of my adventure, I returned to
Barcelona a week later. As I was ushered through customs, I held my breath,
wondering if they would let me into a country I didn’t belong. My mind drifted
to California and students crossing borders. They gave me a stamp and ushered
me back to Barcelona, where I would live illegally for the next ten
months. There and then I decided to savior every minute, talk with as many
locals as possible. I would make myself as part of this world, even if I was
told I wasn’t.

Almost a year later, I left Spain, carrying on four hour
conversations in Spanish, giving the locals directions, and feeling more
Catalan than American. Barcelona had taught me how to stand in my own strength
when all support was gone.

When I tell people of my experience they say, “I could never do what you
did.” I simply respond, “Sure you can. You just have to be okay with being
uncomfortable.”

As a teacher in California’s San Fernando Valley, I speak about my
experience to a similar group of students. We talk about struggle and what it
has taught us. We talk about the borders that we cross, on land or in our
minds, to find opportunity, to find ourselves. I throw around words like
perspective and humilty, talk about getting lost to find myself. Now I can look
my students in the eye and tell them , “Sinceramente comprendo tu historia
porque es la mía también.” I truly understand your story, because it is mine
too.

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